"Three weeks in and the massive place finally feels like home!" Circe smiles as she FaceTimes her aunt and husband while they make a stop in the Bahamas.
"Oh, I'm so happy you like it, darling!" Delia smiles as she holds the phone close to her face as the connection was spotty.
"One question, though, what the hell is this?" Circe asks as she points her phone's camera at a painted sculpture of what can only be described as a grotesque face.
Gasps come from the phone and she whips her phone back to her face, "What's up? Everything alright, Aunt Dee?" Delia just has a nervous look on her face but she holds a smile so to not scare Circe, "It's just an old sculpture from when Lydia was 14. If it creeps you out too much, feel free to dump it in a closet."
"Or drop it from the second floor!" Charles calls out in the background, causing Delia to chastise him, "Charles! I put blood, sweat and so many tears into that!"
"I can tell, Aunt dee, it's… Really detailed." Circe shrugs as she puts the head on a shelf in a closet, pointing the face to the back of the closet.
She then picks up a different book and reads off the title while asking, "Also, what's the- 'The Living and the Dead: Handbook for the Recently Deceased Companion?'" Charles takes the phone, "Tha-at's just an old joke book, you can just put that in my desk, it reads like stereo instructions."
"I got ya, uncle Chuck," Circe laughs a bit as she tosses the book into a drawer, "I like your place, though. I finally got rid of a ton of dust bunnies and as you said, I left the attic and the little display of the town alone."
"Good to hear, have you heard from your mother?" Charles asks and Circe shakes her head, "Nope! And I'm glad for it. I swear, I'll owe you and Aunt Dee until I die."
"You helping out at our place and keeping the riff-raff and rodents out is more than enough. Have any of the neighbors stopped by?" He asks, shielding his eyes from the sun.
"One lady dropped off an apple pie, there was a girl scout and… a man claiming to be part of the census bureau but he literally didn't have any papers or anything so I didn't answer the door." Circe shrugs as she heads upstairs, "Anywho, it's good to hear from you guys! Call back when you get to another port!"
Her aunt and uncle say goodbye and hang up and Circe tosses her phone onto her bed, stretching a bit. After putting a load of laundry to wash, she decides to run a bath, relaxing for a moment. With soft music playing in the background and a mud mask on her face, she finally relaxes in her bubble bath…
Until she hears the dryer start all of a sudden. Circe gets out of the tub and checks on it, worried that there was a weird short in the wiring that caused the dryer to start…
She finds her clothes that she had just put to wash now tumbling in the dryer.
"... What the fuck?" Circe murmurs as she dries off and changes into sweats and a t-shirt. She heads downstairs, wanting to make herself a snack and something to drink, only to find a plate of sliced up fruit and a glass of juice next to it.
"What the fuck!?"
It was another couple additions to the ongoing series of strange stuff that had been happening lately. It all started with the windows opening when she first arrived. She chalked it up to it being an old house and maybe she had loosened the window up somehow? Another couple of instances were that she had scrubbed and cleaned all day and went to bed with the intention to dust out the house and organize the pantries in the morning. The next day, she woke up and all of the chores were done. Deny, deny, deny. This was one weird action too far for her.
"Okay! Okay, Delia said that there a couple of presences in this house, ya'll had better be ghosts or else I'm going to scream so loud that Mr. and Mrs. Fredrickson next door will call the cops!" Circe demands. A man and a woman appear out of nowhere, waving their arms. "We're ghosts! We're ghosts!"
This did absolutely nothing for Circe that she did, in fact, start screaming loudly and the neighbors certainly did call the police.
One embarrassing half hour later, Circe sat on the sofa and the two ghosts were standing in the living room.
"So… You both died here?" Circe asks, her cup of juice clasped between both hands as she focuses on a random spot on the floor.
"Not technically. We died on that red bridge that you drove on to get here…" The woman, Barbara, explains. "Technically, off of it…" The man, Adam, clarifies.
"And you both… Adam and Barbara, have been here since? And you've been watching me?" Circe looks up at both of them.
The two hold their hands up, both exclaiming, "Not in a creepy way! We swear!"
After another moment of stunned silence, she can't help but start laughing, "Of course… Of course, this all would happen! Now all of what Delia said makes sense… But be all of this as it may, I'm not sensing that either one of you is… Well, evil."
The stress the two held in their shoulders seems to be released as they laugh with her. "No, not at all!" Adam smiles as Barbara nods, "Delia told us all about you and that we'd like you. We just wanted to take things slow on showing who we are since she said you'd be staying for a while."
"Is that… All she told you?" Circe asks, looking up at them.
"Yeah, just a basic rundown on who you are and what you like." Barbara shrugs, "Does it help that we like you? And most of your taste in music?"
The living woman smiles as she sits back, "Well, let me appropriately thank you both for all the help you've been giving me. Seriously, you both are the best roommates I've ever had."
"It gives us something to do." Adam shrugs, "Plus, it's not like you're a bad person, either."
Looking at the clock, Circe sighs, "Well, I'd better head to bed. I want to look for a job while in town and Delia said her art studio would have a spot open for me."
"Alright, just ask if you need anything and we'll help out any way we can." Adam grins.
She nods and heads upstairs to her room, shutting the door behind her. When she turns back around, she sees Delia's grotesque head sculpture sitting on her bed and she yells out a bit, "Fuck!"
Rolling her eyes, she picks it up and tilts it to look at it's base, "... What does this say? 'Never say his name… Beetle… Juice?' Whelp, here's hoping I didn't reawaken some ancient demon or something like that."
Once again, she tosses the head into her own closet and heads to bed, assuming that the Maitlands were just poking some fun at her...
Of course, there would be no story to continue if that were the case.